france and mexico react to new nsa spying revelations

Headlines like ‘Snowden leaks: France summons US envoy over NSA surveillance claims: Prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault ‘shocked’ at Le Monde’s claims that US intercepts French phone calls on ‘massive scale’ may make good copy for online clicks and Tweet-rage, but on this one, and the revelations over NSA spying in Mexico, we might need to differentiate what is for public consumption, and what is actual outrage.

You’ve no doubt read that Le Monde, in partnership with Glenn Greenwald, has shown, via graphs, slides, and charts:

‘Amongst the thousands of documents extracted from the NSA by its ex-employee there is a graph which describes the extent of telephone monitoring and tapping (DNR – Dial Number Recognition) carried out in France. It can be seen that over a period of thirty days – from 10 December 2012 to 8 January 2013, 70,3 million recordings of French citizens’ telephone data were made by the NSA. This agency has several methods of data collection. According to the elements obtained by Le Monde, when a telephone number is used in France, it activates a signal which automatically triggers the recording of the call. Apparently this surveillance system also picks up SMS messages and their content using key words. Finally, the NSA apparently stores the history of the connections of each target – or the meta-data.’ [snip]

The techniques used for these interceptions appear under the codenames ‘DRTBOX’ and ‘WHITEBOX’. [snip] But they give sufficient explanation to lead us to think that the NSA targets concerned both people suspected of association with terrorist activities as well as people targeted simply because they belong to the worlds of business, politics or French state administration. ‘

‘DRTBOX’ cracked me up; it’s British for ‘kitty litter pan’.

(Through NSA program ‘Boundless Informant): ‘One of the documents which Le Monde was able to consult notes that between 8 February and 8 March 2013, the NSA collected, throughout the world, 124,8 billion telephone data items and 97,1 billion computer data items.’

And the news via der Spiegelon Sunday that the NSA hacked into the email accounts of both the past President of Mexico, Felipe Calderone, and the current President, Enrique Pena Nieto, the outrage was a bit hollow, given that Mexico and the US partner so closely in the drug wars.

‘The NSA has been systematically eavesdropping on the Mexican government for years. It hacked into the president’s public email account and gained deep insight into policymaking and the political system. The news is likely to hurt ties between the US and Mexico.’

Spying on the Presidents’ emails seem to have been new revelations, though.

‘The National Security Agency (NSA) has a division for particularly difficult missions. Called “Tailored Access Operations” (TAO), this department devises special methods for special targets.

That category includes surveillance of neighboring Mexico, and in May 2010, the division reported its mission accomplished. A report classified as “top secret” said: “TAO successfully exploited a key mail server in the Mexican Presidencia domain within the Mexican Presidential network to gain first-ever access to President Felipe Calderon’s public email account.”

According to the NSA, this email domain was also used by cabinet members, and contained “diplomatic, economic and leadership communications which continue to provide insight into Mexico’s political system and internal stability.” The president’s office, the NSA reported, was now “a lucrative source.”

Der Spiegel believes that it will strain US/Mexican relations, but Mexico has been relatively moderate in its reaction; neither they nor Francois Hollande or French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius have even mentioned their sovereign rights having been abrogated. Hmmm.

While looking for an English version of this new story two days ago, I ran into this piece at Le Monde from April that may prove embarrassing for French officials playing for the citizens in expressing their outrage: ‘Revelations of French Big Brother’:

‘If the revelations about the American espionage program Prism set off a chorus of indignation in Europe, France itself protested only weakly. For two excellent reasons: Paris already knew about it – and it’s doing exactly the same thing. Le Monde is able to disclose that the General Directorate of External Security (the DGSE, or special services) systematically collects the electromagnetic signals emitted by computers and telephones in France, and the flow of signals between France and countries abroad: the entirety of our communications are being spied on. All of our email messages, SMS messages, itemised phone bills and connections to FaceBook and Twitter are then stored for years. If this immense data base was used just by the DGSE, which operates only outside French borders, it would already be illegal. But the six other intelligence services – among them the Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence, the customs service and the Tracfin anti-money-laundering service – delve into this base daily for the data of interest to them. This takes place discreetly, on the margins of legality and beyond any serious control. Politicians are perfectly aware of it, but secrecy is the rule.’

Indeed, the article quotes parliamentary intelligence records on the subject of mutualization infrastructure (the massive data base)among the security agencies, and even quotes speeches by the technical director of the DGSE. The probably intentional vagueness of the wording that can lead to successful access to the metadata can lead to ‘identify(ing) the entourage of politicians at the highest level of the state, whatever their position and the nature of the links under surveillance’, according to the author.

Ooops. More ‘shut up or we’ll spill your secrets’ hints?

Ironically, or maybe not, apparently former DNI Dennis Blair had been trying to forge an agreement with France ending their mutual snooping. According to the New York Times, the White House apparently tanked the idea, but claimed that it wasn’t the proximate cause of Blair’s decision to have his resignation accepted. Sorry, Dennis Blair, but it seems your attempts to reign in spying a bit weren’t altogether appreciated. The Times had the ‘France spying on its own’ story by this morning, too.

The AP has some interesting quotes by former CIA spook Bob Baer about France’s spying on both diplomats and business people, even bugging the special seats on the defunct Concorde.

Two other things:

One wag on Twitter, when commenting on General Keith Alexander’s plans to leave his job as Director of the NSA in March said:

“He announced that he was leaving his post because he wanted to spend less time with your family.”

And this is a fun trailer for a soon-to-be-released film, ‘How the Government Tracks You: NSA Surveillance’. Even The Dude weighs in.

43 responses to “france and mexico react to new nsa spying revelations”

Thanks for going in depth with this wendye! As and although the mantra that this is nothing new takes on a life of its own, we should increasingly be isolating the NSA from good government practices much as I do think drone warfare is now coming under increasing scrutiny from the world at large – these two poisoned batwings of US policy will come back to bite, let us hope, in the manner of the scorpion’s two pronged tail – where it counts, in the heart of the beast itself.

[I’ve been watching too much ‘Lord of the Rings’ and reading Tolkein’s biography. Excellent information on what was happening to the world during World War I – we tend to forget.]

It is no wonder why the “intelligence community” fails at preventing actual terrorist acts; by gauging the foreignness of terrorists’ electronic communications by words such as marijuana, burn, wave, sick, hurricane and snow. It would appear to be CODE, more applicable to the conduct and travails of the illicit drug trade in the U.S. homeland and abroad.

it wasn’t my intention to add to the ‘this is nothing new’ meme, juliania, but to indicate why some national leaders only issue faux-outrage at the revelations given what their security snoops are doing as well, and the other reasons for their moderate tones, especially that many aren’t cancelling meetings that might aid them economically (or rather their 1%-ers), or cause them to cancel their arms deals with the usa, things like that.

i have to say that i’m in the camp that believes that human rights watch and amnesty international should have weighed in on drones breaking international law far earlier. perhaps because i remember that at least one of them put up giant billboards during r2p in libya thanking NATO for ‘liberating’ the libyan citizens. they should not have done that, imo, or supported that ‘war of liberation’. but yes, at least they, and that the UN rapporteur on war crimes believes ‘some aspects of the US drone program might be war crimes'( if substantiations are proven) may help if all this isn’t more than Smoke. the UN needs to get off US soil.

hey, mr. code. yes, and perhaps scrutinizing ‘eco-terrorists’, as well. but as for tamping down illegal drug trade, legalization.is.off.the.table. big profits to me made in the industrial prison complex and funding both sides of the drug wars.

those who watch the hypocrisy of the arms sanctions always have a field day, too, but i’ve forgotten some of this week’s news about that already. heads have to swivel too fast, and too often to keep up. at least that’s true for me.

and how about that decoder ring? i found several messages to you bounced back to some odd box in my email thang, by the by.

hello, tuttle (and i like your sea tuttle avatar). what are we being clear on? i’d looked on the denver post for a story on the IAPA conference after mr. wendydavis called me and said that a squib about it was on the print version of the durango (CO) herald this morning.

not that i don’t quite trust the voice of russia, but i’d rather not use it as a source unless i could help it…

of course all latin nations have been spied on! loads of resources to bid on, loads of lefties in chavista nations, loads of side trade deals to spy on. what am i missing?

i’m trying to finish the manicuring of the last of our three cannabis plants. what a labor of love it is! takes the gardening equivalent of manicure scissors to take off all the wee leaves around the buds. what a plant! can’t wait until you can grow some. watching them reach maturity with all the color changes was quite something.

exactly, mafr. every time i read diFi’s crap i feel a bit like smackin’ her one. she even knows she’s lying, and then her spokesfolk come in and say, “that’s not what she meant! it’s just what she said!” (concerning: foiled plots)

would chinese and russian officials use TOR, or would you guess they have their own secure email channels? i don’t know much about this stuff, for all the writing i’ve done on it. i can’t even figure out hushmail… ;)

crikey, an e-friend in prague invited me over to watch a conversation he was in at a site where i used to blog (dagblog.com, arg), and one commenter linked to a bob cesca piece in which he showed a tweet of greenwald’s that he said ‘endorsed’ the oathkeepers. the comments hating on glenn were sincerely depressing.

‘my fish is a raccoon!’ omg. i don’t always care for lee camp, but that really was funny, tuttle. but you didn’t say what i was missing.

to stretch my point to juliania, iirc, glenn said more revelations about germany were on the way, and i wonder if merkel’s administration will be implicated. on the durango herald site, i think it was, he said again that the biggest stories have yet to come.

off topic, i may post an open thread on the new venture he, poitras, and scahill are undertaking with pierre omidyar. i’ve read a lot of puff pieces about him over the past few days, but i admit to having a few concerns, and not * just* because he’s worth $8.3 billion. ;)

My attempt not to speak in tongues about an issue.
But, I have all your msgs thru 10/18/13: “srsly” (just delete mine from your ‘odd’ box; since they obviously arrive encrypted, regardless of my decoder app). And back to my usual exuberant irrationality:
Perpetually, in their “heads-need-to-roll” National Security State; no need for US to pivot OURS to their ever wayward wind – Hey Rube! Honey Obadger Don’t CARE if his Goldman devices work Or NOT; he just rolls out his serial rodeo-clown rhetoric to distract US from His BULL!http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2013/10/21/obama-really-shouldnt-be-bragging-about-20-million-visits/

oh. that must be what today’s email from the WH was about. i get it now, as it said in part: “The President is the first to admit that the website’s problems are unacceptable. But Obamacare is more than just a website.” He must mean: ‘it’s a way of life’, eh? very zen of him…

Wasn’t you, but the Borowitz piece that had me almost spill tea on the keyboard. Resin flashback, thanks. Same snips, used ’em to clip fresh spinach tonight, but they work well for clipping the runner shoots when training tomatoes and cucs to climb a string. Thanks for all your work on the threads and you insights for this political neophyte.

aside from my cautions/objections to the two human rights organizations (and the un one to boot) not objecting earlier, and parsing their words overly carefully, imo, please see dave swanson on the subject. i won’t clip parts, since it’s not that long a read.

Sorry to have been unclear, wendye – no way was I classing you with the ‘nothing to see hear’s but rather attempting to indicate the shallowness of that argument in the face of very apparent industrial and political espionage as these country by country revelations are exposing.

I take your point that it is far too little and far too long in coming, the international noisemaking about drones, but it is at least not silence and that to me is of some help in the long run, whilst indeed it is coming on the heels of wanton carnage accomplished while too many were silent. To me that it happens at all is cause for celebration because I think even this little would not happen were it not that public efforts are finally starting to change the discussion.

And yes, the Aussie fires and arson – but this one today interested me from the Guardian:

“Defence department reportedly admits starting State Mine fire
A massive fire burning in Lithgow and the Blue Mountains was caused by explosives training which was being carried out in the area by the department of defence.

The Rural Fire Service said an investigation had found the training exercise was responsible for causing the blaze, which has burnt out more than 46,000 hectares and sparked fears of turning into a “mega-fire”.

“The investigation has concluded the fire started as a result of exploding ordinances on the range on Wednesday,” a RFS spokesman said on Wednesday.

On Saturday, Defence said it had launched an investigation into whether the State Mine Fire was caused by a training exercise on army land at Marrangaroo.”

Oh (sorry to be longwinded) and CTuttle – I got those email swift no-no’s also – I had forgotten the all important “e”. Probably the wouldbe governor of Arizona was the petulant nonreceptor. But, mahalo! Nice to see you here.

To digress a bit, wendye – I had got to the point in Tolkien’s bio where Tolkien was of a mind that language presupposes a mythology – his labor being to provide one for the modern Brit cast into the morass of unending, destructive war.

That idea impressed upon me that we need a new mythology – his had in it no place for the attraction of soulless oligarchy I think, or rather Gollum represented such, and he was almost a wraith himself. Not a wealthy jetsetter living off the diminishing fat of the land, as we have today.

And also, the mythology being forced into our language by the ptb has crept in even to teapartying hobbitry, one might say, as everything became privatized (and privatization is good! Becoming rich at the expense of others is good! We all could get there if we try!)

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade! Toward that end, I have drawn on my market expertise to recommend two great investment ideas. The first is, invest in carrier pigeon breeding farms. The second, market toilet paper containing one of the Bill of Rights provisions on each sheet. Bonus leisure time suggestion-when you need a break from total surveillance, schedule a colonoscopy. Ah, smell the freedom.

dunno if you’ve made your way downthread to my link to dave swanson’s most recent piece, juliania, but he ballasts my concerns, and speaks to them at length and very well, extending what my ‘caveats’ shorthand meant.

“That is to say, if the UN is going to give its stamp of approval to a new kind of war but ask for a little token of gratitude, this is what it should be. But let’s stop for a minute and consider. The general lawyerly consensus is that killing people with drones is fine if it’s not a case where they could have been captured, it’s not “disproportionate,” it’s not too “collateral,” it’s not too “indiscriminate,” etc., — the calculation being so vague that nobody can measure it. We’re not wrong to trumpet the good parts of these reports, but let’s be clear that the United Nations, an institution created to eliminate war, is giving its approval to a new kind of war, as long as it’s done properly, and it’s giving its approval in the same reports in which it says that drones threaten to make war the norm and peace the exception.

I hate to be a wet blanket, but that’s stunning. Drones make war the norm, rather than the exception, and drone murders are going to be deemed legal depending on a variety of immeasurable criteria. And the penalty for the ones that are illegal is going to be nothing, at least until African nations start doing it, at which point the International Criminal Court will shift into gear.”

my over-arching concern is for this framing being ‘good enough’, and acting as a gatekeeper for banning weaponized drones outright globally after being named as the war crimes they are, much in the way that the big green groups working to ‘greenwash’ capitalism’s mineral extraction and carbon and other elements in the air effectively neutralizes true, if difficult, solutions. that’s all. let me think some about how a new mythology *could be* constructed. ;)

I take your point, wendye, and I would never say that this framing is ‘good enough’. The signs I saw were simply of the ptb’s need to turn and address a public awareness – sometimes that aborts a war, sometimes that is an attempt to quash. Always the intent is to preserve the status quo. The community uprisings won’t be satisfied with half measures. At this point, we are not mollified. We must keep on, as you say.

We still must find encouragement where we can, and that is what I do.

With respect to the Aussie fires yes, shame on the military in that instance. Australia is an exceptionally interesting place, because the natural world has fire as a component there. The bush will come back if it is not subject to the extremes of temperature a mega fire inflicts, but global warming has made summer conflagrations happen now in springtime, so it is anyone’s guess what the summer will bring.

Native practices to manage fire, only now being more respected, feed into the community mix there. There is so much to learn, so little time to learn it.

i understand your hope in the situation, juliania, and i wish i expected that more will come of it. the hearings being meaningful is doubtful, and a public clamoring against their use? hard to imagine at this point. but yes: a baby step might lead somewhere. (damn that’s hard to believe as i type it) ;)

This is along the lines of my original thought about ‘increasing scrutiny from the world at large’ – I hadn’t been focussed on the UN or Amnesty International when I wrote that, but rather on the ‘at large’, people – comments on this piece give the range of the discussion that I find hopeful:

I would however, say that even the limited aspect of ‘legitimacy’ being proposed points out the sheer illegality of drone warfare in general, so I’m hedging my bets a bit – seems to have stirred the beast even such a half measure, doesn’t it?

i’d watched a video with obomba’s crap defenses and bits from p.m. sharif on boursorama.com, but i can’t find it again, sorry. the juxtaposition was telling. of course, afghanistan’s karzai has been demanding the same for years (but not really), cuz he also doesn’t want to be left high and dry with no protection as the military pulls out (how many mercenaries will remain is anyone’s guess).

in june, the most recent poll i could find, 63% of americans applauded their use, although ‘warrants’, lol, were in the mix). so, deconstructing their benefits, as in: they cause more violence and enmity…needs to happen. as does r2p, and again, all those human rights organizations were supportive, and probably will be with Africom invasions, imo.

anyhoo, we may just have to be a wee bit in disagreement, and i will acknowledge that i am ‘the minority report’, crank that i am.

“The furore over the scale of American mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden shifted to an incendiary new level on Wednesday evening when Angela Merkel of Germany called Barack Obama to demand explanations over reports that the US National Security Agency was monitoring her mobile phone.

Merkel was said by informed sources in Germany to be “livid” over the reports and convinced, on the basis of a German intelligence investigation, that the reports were utterly substantiated.

The German news weekly, Der Spiegel, reported an investigation by German intelligence, prompted by research from the magazine, that produced plausible information that Merkel’s mobile was targeted by the US eavesdropping agency. The German chancellor found the evidence substantial enough to call the White House and demand clarification. [snip]

The White House responded that Merkel’s mobile is not being tapped. “The president assured the chancellor that the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of the chancellor,” said a statement from Jay Carney, the White House spokesman.

But Berlin promptly signalled that the rebuttal referred to the present and the future and did not deny that Merkel’s communications had been monitored in the past.

Asked by the Guardian if the US had monitored the German chancellor’s phone in the past, a top White House official declined to deny that it had.”

(Hollande called Obomba, too, but only got a recording with loops of James Clapper’s claptraddle playing his old refrain about privacy, security, privacy, security…)

“On social media, a number of Germans mocked Merkel’s change of tone over the NSA affair, given her previous reluctance to talk about the controversy. Jens König, a reporter for the news weekly Stern, tweeted that it was “the first time that Merkel is showing some proper passion during the NSA affair“.

you may be right, but there seem to be several conflicting themes at work here. one is that the german people would no doubt be very sensitive to the notion that the nsa is spying on them, and that may extend to merkel’s and the cabinet members’ phones.

it also may be true that angela knows that there may be documents coming showing that the bnd is *also* doing mass surveillance on the german people (as well, of course, as in other countries, businesses, etc.)

i found two different pieces this morning, and they may indicate some of the tensions that are at work for angela herself, and vis a vis obomba himself. this is from der spiegel datelined washington, oddly:

“Merkel, for her part, has an entirely different problem. She would like to appear
as the victim here, but her government this summer talked down reports stemming from the Snowden leaks, in some cases flatly denying them. Those statements now sound absurd. In an interview with German public broadcaster ARD in July, Merkel reacted with surprise to the question of whether she had personally been eavesdropped on. “I’m not aware of anything, otherwise I would have reported it to the parliamentary control committee,” she said. On another occasion, she assured the public that she had no reason “to doubt the United States’ compliance with German law.”

Merkel’s comments were surpassed by her Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich and Chief of Staff Ronald Pofalla. Friedrich said in August that the “suspicions” had “dissolved into air” and that there were no indications that German government agencies had been spied on. Pofalla similarly declared the spying affair completely over, saying, “The accusations are off the table.”

discussing obomba’s june visit to berlin just after der spiegel had announced the first round of nsa spying on germany (before the election, remember?):

” Shortly beforehand, Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel stood side by side in her chancellery, fielding questions about American surveillance of foreigners’ phone and e-mail traffic. Pressed personally by Ms. Merkel, the president said that terrorist threats in Germany were among those foiled by intelligence operations around the world, and Ms. Merkel concurred.

Senior intelligence officials have since made plain that cooperation between the United States and Germany in the field is essential to tracking what they view as potential terrorist threats.”

the writing is murky as to whose intel officials, but clearly she had some reason to hush it all down. it was barely a blip as an election issue in the end, although she is said to be the german version of ‘no-drama obomba’. so i dunno how this will play out, or what further revelations might be in the works. but of course the world stage is the important one as all this comes to light, and…i love it.

“France, Mexico, Brazil and Germany have all provided the White House with a list of detailed questions about the reports of surveillance, demanding explanations and assurances it will stop. None have so far received what they believe to be a satisfactory answer.”

Thank you. Hmmm … one; up, from none. And for thwarting an $8500 donation to ‘Al Qaeda’ (AQ) in Somalia?! AL QAEDA IS US! Its AL CIADUH Company bankrolled Osama; then turned and snuffed him out. “We” fight ‘against’ AQ in Afghanistan; “we” fight AQ NOT in Iraq (but it then jihads in, after our invasion); “we” fight for AQ in Libya; but “we” fight ‘against’ AQ in Yemen; and now ObamAssassin FUND$ AQ in Syria for upwards of $ 1 BILLION (let’s just call it $850 Million). That’s exponentially 100,000 TIMES more of a monetary contribution to AQ by this terr’ oppressident than San Diego Basaaly Moalin’s. Where are the Seal Team 6 swat members swarming the White House; where is the extraordinary extradition of its occupant; where is the terminal ticket to Gitmo; where is the no-share, cigarette-smoking tormentor of the deposed DESPOTUS in his tiger cage, where is the remand to the Hague World Court for true Nuremburg JUSTICE! Jejune.

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

ha. i’d seen the *facts* and Yves’ post, but went by it in search of another of her posts. hell’s bells: i dinnae know there was VIDEO, lol!

thank you, nonquixote. and what would your WI obots say? would they quote bill clinton, paraphrased? ‘why not take hollywood’s money and do what ya want?’ this is gettin’ pretty silly, eh? headlines like: ‘nsa says obomba never was told we wuz tappin’ angela merkel’s phone’. crikey, to say the white house has lost control of the news cycle is an understatement.

hope you are well, and i hope you enjoy this, as well. she just opens her mouth…